


Here Comes Your Man

by involuntaryorange



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, Crack, Humor, M/M, Stripper!Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:45:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5078308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/involuntaryorange/pseuds/involuntaryorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames is spying on a mark in a club when he meets a very... <em>unusual</em> stripper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here Comes Your Man

**Author's Note:**

> Unintentionally inspired by a-forger-and-a-point-man, who wanted a Stripper!Arthur fic. This is definitely not what she had in mind.

Of all the places Eames had gone in the service of following a mark, a male strip club in the Castro was probably one of the _least_ sleazy. For an international terrorist, Hans Geiszler had surprisingly good taste. All Eames had to do was keep an eye on the man, hope he didn’t get recognized, and maybe enjoy watching some pretty young things writhe around in thongs.

Though the pretty young thing currently occupying the stage was perhaps a bit _too_ young, or perhaps Eames was getting too old, because he mostly wanted to offer the boy his jacket and give him cab fare home. He spent most of the boy’s routine spying on Hans out of the corner of his eye, watching the man order an extremely expensive bottle of wine as he chuckled with his cohorts.

The thumping bass of the song drew to a tumultuous end and the boy thrusted his last thrust, and then he was gathering up the bills from the stage and blowing kisses to the men (and women) hooting from the adjacent tables. The emcee, an elegant drag queen in a sparkly purple minidress, strutted back onto the stage clutching her microphone in one immaculately-manicured hand.

“Well, let’s all thank Hot Rod for his enthusiastic performance!” The audience cheered raucously, until the emcee waved a hand to silence them. “Now. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to our next performer…“ She looked down at her paper and squinted, bringing it closer to her face. Eventually she shrugged and looked back to the audience. “…Fred.”

As she walked backstage, Fred strode out past her to whistles and cheers. 

He was certainly gorgeous: slim but well-built, with a sinfully-tailored suit and thick, dark hair that had been slicked back. His face, somewhere between handsome and pretty, was pinched into a severe expression.

He looked like every man Eames had ever wanted to ruffle, rolled into one.

Eames glanced back at Hans, who was laughing heartily at something and pouring himself more liquor, and decided it was safe to redirect his attention for a few minutes.

Fred stood at center stage and waited for the wolf-whistles to die down. Then he signaled someone off-stage, and the music started up.

It took Eames a few seconds to place the song; it was “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” Eames couldn’t help but puzzle over that one. For one thing, Fred wasn’t wearing anything Santa-related (at least, not as a top layer). For another thing, it was the middle of June.

Fred removed his jacket.

He did it in a very businesslike manner, but not the kind of businesslike manner that Eames would call _sexy_. It was less of a “let’s get down to the business of fucking” aesthetic and more of an “I just worked an 18-hour-day and I’m ready to crash” aesthetic. _Well_ , Eames reasoned, _let’s give him a chance_.

Fred eased his jacket onto a hanger (where had he gotten the hanger from??) and looked around the stage for somewhere to hang it. He was clearly considering running backstage but eventually just laid the jacket carefully across the stage.

His hands went to his tie, renewing the cheering that had started to die down. He seemed to struggle with it, yanking at it where it disappeared under his waistcoat before realizing that he had a tie pin holding it in place. He undid the tie pin with a flourish and fumbled it, sending it flying into the crowd with a look of horror that suggested he’d intended to keep it. 

He unbuttoned his waistcoat and removed it, looking around for his hanger. He wrestled with the hanger, trying to get the waistcoat onto it under the suit jacket without letting the jacket fall; once he’d managed it he gave both a sharp tug and then, apparently satisfied, laid the whole thing gently back on the stage.

He began unbuttoning his shirt, squinting down at his fingers as they prodded clumsily at the buttons. Eames was reminded of his six-year-old nephew; he could have sworn the tip of Fred’s tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth at one point.

When the shirt was finally unbuttoned, Fred tugged it out of his trousers and removed it, and — oh, that was nice, actually. He looked just as good without a shirt as Eames had first suspected: lean but muscled, with fair, unblemished skin. It was almost enough to distract Eames from the way Fred carefully folded his shirt and placed it on top of his jacket.

Fred undid his belt and yanked it out of his belt loops, though by the wince that briefly crossed his face Eames could tell he’d accidentally whipped himself in the arm with it. He placed the belt gently atop his pile of clothing.

He started to unbutton his fly — despite himself, Eames felt a strange anticipation growing — but then he realized he was still wearing his shoes. He lifted his left foot and and pulled on the shoelace to untie it. He lifted his right foot and pulled on the shoelace, but it was apparently knotted too tightly. He brought both hands to the shoe to wrestle with it, wobbling and then hopping on his left foot to remain upright. Eventually he gave up and just toed both shoes off in disgust.

Fred undid his fly and unceremoniously stepped out of his trousers, once again folding them neatly and placing them with his other clothes. He had lovely legs, though the black dress socks going up to his mid-calf were ruining the effect somewhat.

Then… Fred began to dance.

Well, it might’ve been generous to call it “dancing.” It seemed to mostly consist of shuffling from side to side and clapping, with some semi-enthusiastic nodding and the occasional ninety-degree turn — wait a minute, was he doing the _Electric Slide_? This wasn’t even the Electric Slide _music_. (Although the Electric Slide music would have been an improvement.)

Eames watched with increasingly slack-jawed amazement as Fred attempted to gyrate his pelvis at the end of a shuffle; it looked like an exercise a physical therapist might prescribe to a hip-replacement patient. And the scowl never left Fred’s face, although he passed it from audience member to audience member as though each of them had insulted his mother in a new and creative way.

Eventually Fred’s eyes met Eames’s, sending a thrill down his spine. Eames lifted his drink to his lips and tried to school his expression to something less transparently baffled, but Fred was already moving on, looking past Eames and… widening his eyes in alarm?

A bullet whistled past Eames’s right ear and shattered his glass of whiskey.

Amid the chaos of screams and shoving that erupted, Eames dove under his table, wincing at the stickiness of the floor as he pulled out his gun. Two more shots rang out, this time from a different part of the room. Great; he was surrounded.

He felt a pang of guilt as he thought of Fred, exposed — in more ways than one — and vulnerable on stage. He was a bloody awful stripper, to be sure, but that didn’t mean he deserved to die. Eames was just about to peek out from under the table to see if Fred had managed to escape when the stripper in question dove under his table, firing off a few rounds on the way.

Eames boggled. “Where were you keeping a _gun_?”

“Really? _That’s_ what you’re curious about here?” Fred’s voice was pleasant, a resonant baritone. He put a finger in his ear and started talking to the air in front of him. “Fred to base. Things aren’t exactly going to plan. I’m gonna need an extraction over here. I’ve got a bystander with me.”

“ _Bystander_?” Eames said, affronted. “Excuse me, who was being bloody _shot at_?”

Fred rolled his eyes. “We’ll meet you at the rendezvous point as soon as we can get there.” He took his finger out of his ear and gestured to Eames’s gun with his chin. “You know how to use that thing?”

“Of course I know how to use it! What kind of idiot do you take me for?”

“I don’t take you for anything other than someone Hans wants to kill. Which, for the time being, means you’re on my side.”

“This night is not going how I expected it to,” Eames remarked.

“Cover me while I get to the fire exit,” Fred said, and then he was climbing out from under the table while Eames scrambled to provide cover fire. Fred returned the favor once he’d gotten to the relative safety of the doorway, and then Eames followed Fred out into the alley.

Fred took a moment to gain his bearings and then he started sprinting deeper into the alley; Eames shrugged and ran after him, trying to keep up but lingering far enough back to be able to admire his arse. His stripping had belied his grace; Fred in motion was a beautiful sight, all lithe muscle flexing and stretching as he jumped up to pull down a fire escape ladder. Eames followed him up the fire escape, across a series of rooftops, over a ledge and into an open window, through a rather confused dinner party (though whether they were more confused by the sudden presence of two strange men, by the fact that the men had guns, or by the fact that one of them was only wearing pants, Eames wasn’t sure), down twelve (or possibly thirteen) flights of stairs, and then out into another alley just as an unmarked black van was pulling up.

The passenger window rolled down. “Code word?” Fred demanded.

“Magic Mike,” the woman driving the van answered.

Fred gritted his teeth and huffed in acknowledgment, then hustled Eames to the back of the van, where he opened the cargo doors and climbed in, dragging Eames in after him. He quickly pulled the doors shut and pounded on the cargo divider, and Eames fell over onto his side as the van launched back into motion.

Rather than sitting back up, Eames decided to just lie on the floor of the van as he tried to regain his breath.

“Fuck,” Fred said, banging his head back against the metal side of the van. “That was one of my favorite suits.”

Eames rolled his head over to stare at him in disbelief. “Who exactly _are_ you, Fred? CIA?”

Fred didn’t deny it, which was as good as confirmation. “Well, first of all, my name is Arthur. Fred was just my stripper name.”

“You chose _Fred_ as your _stripper name_?”

Fred — no, Arthur — shrugged. “Yeah?”

“Have you ever even _been_ to a strip club before? Wait, what am I saying, _of course_ you’ve never been to a strip club before. That explains _so much_.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Arthur. You are a terrible stripper. That was one of the least sexy things I’ve ever seen.”

Arthur scowled. “I _told_ them I’d be better as a waiter, but I lost a bet with the head of the operation last week.”

“I can’t say I find it comforting that personal bets play such a major role in U.S. counterterrorism ops.”

“Whatever.” Arthur waved his hand dismissively. “Anyway, you’re exaggerating. I wasn’t _that_ bad.”

“What’s the opposite of a boner? Because that’s what you gave me.”

“Shut up.” Arthur’s brow furrowed even more, and he muttered something inaudible over the sound of the van’s engine.

“Sorry, what was that? I couldn’t quite hear you.”

“I _said_ ,” Arthur replied, glowering at Eames with a bit of a blush staining his cheeks, “that I don’t usually take my clothes off in front of people I don’t know. And apparently that’s for the best.”

“Arthur, pet,” Eames said, flailing an arm around in an attempt to pat him consolingly. “The only reason I’m remarking on it is that it’s frankly _impressive_ that someone as bloody hot as you could manage to make getting naked unsexy.”

Arthur’s blush deepened, but he also turned his head to hide a poorly-suppressed smile. “Whatever.”

“Would you like my jacket, by the way?” 

Arthur didn’t say no, so Eames squirmed around on the floor of the van until he’d removed it and passed it over to Arthur. Arthur draped it over his shoulders silently.

“Just don’t get body glitter all over it.”

“Shut up,” Arthur repeated.

“Where are we going, by the way?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“But you’re CIA?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Is there anything you _can_ tell me?”

Arthur cast an evaluative look over Eames’s body, eyes lingering at his shoulders and his thighs. “Not until you’ve been debriefed.”

“Oh, I’m going to be debriefed, am I?”

“Yes,” Arthur replied. “Thoroughly.”

“To be clear, ‘debriefing’ is a euphemism, yes?”

Arthur’s mouth twitched. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Darling,” Eames said as the van took a sharp turn and sent him rolling into one of the walls, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful partnership.”

**Author's Note:**

> Working title was "TOW Arthur is a Terrible Stripper," but I decided that that plot point should be a surprise.
> 
> This was also probably inspired by the first chapter of kedgeree11's [Let's Say I Let You In](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2542217/chapters/5651708), which is a beautiful piece of comedy.


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